The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-01-17
A NEW INDUSTRY.
Visit to a Fashionable Ladies' Tailor Shop
in New York City.

Visit to a Fashionable Ladies Tailor Shop
in New York City.
A wear ago there were three or four
"woman's tailors' on and near Fifth
avenue, and there was one in Brook
Ign. Their signs read simply, Don
nelly, Robes" or some other
such legend equally manufacturing
And these were not exactly woman's
tailors. They were simply men dress
makers, like Worth in Paris, and were
trading on the popular idea set afoat
by Worth that man has more taste
and originality and boldness in design
inc than women possess. But now
there are twenty-four men dressmakers
above Fourteenth street. They do not
adopt the old Shakespearean phrase,
'the woman's tailor" but proudly
dub themselves 'ladies tailOrs," in
letters of gold and Af boastful dimen-
Sions. n,..4iJer is constantly
increasing, as one sees by the little
signs the mems tailors are adding to
their former shingles, SO as to make
them announce: ALSO riding habits
and costumes for ladies' In word,
the signs on Broadway and Fifth
avenue announce a social revolution,
though any one with eyes to see can
read the same thing in the attire of the
women without looking at the signs at
all. Everywhere uptown cloth jackets
that fit like Jerseys and ulsters that are
nodded TO the graceful, rounding fig
ures OF ladles, as men can scarcely hope
or wish their oyercoatS to be, inclOse
the persons of all well-dressed women.
1t is impossible for any man Except a
20 70 al
new fashion is or Is not a good one.
| would not give fig for the opinion
of a man so dull that he could see a
half dozen Murray Hill girls, who
have strained art and poured out
money in order to look their best, and
then could express any but the one
opinion Amid the rack and stress of
shifting fashions since l have been
among them each alteration in their
gowns has seemed to make them more
and more enchanting.
What brought about this revolution?
Well, first the jersey, which made a
display of the outline of the figure
fashionable, and then the demand for
an equally tight-fitting over-garment
to keep up the accurate exposure of
outline when the weather called for
some thing outside and on top of the
jersey. The mems tailors were called
upon to construct these feminine
''ulsters, as they were called. These
tailOrs got extra prices for this new
work and liked it Chat Is, the extra
prices) SO we'll that they enlarged their
signs to attract more ladies. This en-
crOached on the field of the men dress
makers, who then hired tailors and also
altered their signs. Thus the words
ladies tailors'' appeared on the signs
of two sets of tradesmen. And thus,
also, came it to pass that the original
mems tailOrS went on from making
listers to making dresses and the men
dressmakers became the makers of
tailor made garments of all sorts.
1t is interesting to visit one of these
ladies tailor shops as | did yesterday.
Here were trousers by the score hung
in line on hooks, like beeves before
butchers stall, and across the room
were great glass cases filled with
ladies' jackets and skirts, blazing with
embroidery in gold, with gaudy rib
bOns and with buttons big as butter
dishes. A helpless dude with his coat
off and one arm out stiff, like a. mail
bag catcher on postal car, was being
measured for coat in the thick of a
bevy of circling ladies, one of whom
stood on low platform, while young
girl encircled her with tape measure,
and the great woman's tailor talked of
whalebOnes, Innings, founces and /
don't know what not Over in cor
ner, through the parting of a curtain,
peeped white and pink suggestion of
the shoulder of another lady trying on
a dress. Julian Ralph, tm lftlaCaukee
Sentinel